‘A girl from the Valleys started today, have you heard her accent? It’s jokes.’

I sat by myself in the corner of my sixth-form common room on the first day at my new school. It was the first time I’d ever felt the way I spoke dictated my intelligence, class and character.

My first language is Welsh, and I was raised in Caerphilly, which is a small, working-class, former-mining town in Wales between Cardiff and the start of the Rhymney Valley.

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By the time I was 17, I knew I wanted a career in fashion, however my hometown school wouldn’t let me study a creative subject as we all lived in such a low-income area – they pushed us to examine more ‘academic’ classes instead. So, I decided to move in with my father in Cardiff and change to a school with a better curriculum for arts education.

My peers were far more well-spoken, and I found myself softening my accent to fit in. It became the norm – even at home. I remember my stepsister making light-hearted comments if my accent ever slipped back to ‘Valleys mode’, claiming I was putting it on for a laugh. I’m not alone in changing my accent on purpose – and it doesn’t just go one way.

Political activist and fashion designer Katharine Hamnett tells me that after leaving Central Saint Martins, she felt pressured to change her dialect: ‘I spoke so posh, people would laugh at me and wouldn’t take me seriously, so I had to tone it down.’

But I think it’s important to remember that some of the fashion industry’s greatest political activists, such as Katharine, have posh accents, and some of the industry’s most praised up-and-coming creatives have more regional accents, such as designer Charles Jeffrey who proudly talks with a Glaswegian twang; all dominate the world of fashion.

We can’t have true equality in any industry if it’s only made up of just one, same-sounding voice.

Yes, language is a means of communication, but it’s not a symbol of social status. It is perfectly acceptable to have an accent – and if we don’t embrace them, then we risk losing our individual identities.

This article appears in the May 2019 edition of ELLE UK. Subscribe here to make sure you never miss an issue.